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HOW THE LACONIA SANK 

and 

THE MILITIA MOBILIZATION 
ON THE MEXICAN BORDER 

TWO MASTERPIECES OF REPORTING 

by 

FLOYD P GIBBONS 



HOW THE LACONIA SANK 

AND 

THE MILITIA MOBILIZATION 
ON THE MEXICAN BORDER 




FLOYD P. GIBBONS 



HOW THE LACONIA 
SANK: ^/?e MILITIA 
MOBILIZATION ON 
THE MEXICAN BORDER 

Two masterpieces of reportincJ 
FLOYD P GIBBONS 

London correspondent of iho 
Chicago Tribune, a survivor of 
the Laconia disaster; Special Wir 
Correspondent with the U.SArn^ 
in Mexico. 

Introduction by 

ROBERT R. Mccormick 

JOSEPH M. PATTERSON 



Chicago 

Daudhadayand G)mpany' 

Publishers 






Copyright, 1917, by 

Daughaday and Company 

All rig/its reserved 



©Cl,A457972 
-2 1917 



INTRODUCTION 



The German announcement of an unrestricted sub- 
marine campaign followed by the breaking off of diplo- 
matic relations by our government gave to London a 
renewed value as a source of news. 

The American public immediately became interested to 
learn how England would meet the submarine measure 
and, anticipating hostilities with Germany, to learn what 
unprepared, loosely governed England has done to equip 
herself for war. 

During the course of the war The Tribune has made 
many efforts to obtain interesting news from England 
but, due to the censorship and the deadening effect of 
London association upon American newspaper men, its 
own correspondents had been as unsuccessful as the 
correspondents of other newspapers. 

We chose for our final attempt one of our star local 
reporters, Floyd P. Gibbons. Mr. Gibbons has added 
to a wide experience in local reporting, a series of ad- 
ventures in Mexico with Villa, the expedition to Colonia 
Dublan with Pershing, and a critical study of the militia 
mobilization in Texas. 

In order to safeguard his voyage over we suggested 
that he should travel with Ambassador von Bemstorff on 



6 INTRODUCTION 

the Frederick VII or should go to France via Spain. It 
was his own idea to cross the submarine zone and with 
the expectation of being submarined on the way. For 
this contingency he was clothed and equipped with a 
special life-preserver, a large fresh-water bottle, electric 
flashlights, and a flask of brandy. 

Mr. Gibbons' expectation was realized. His account 
of the sinking of his ship, the Laconia, is one of the great 
feats of reporting in the history of journalism. 

The proximity of the war with Germany makes mili- 
tary training the greatest question before the nation. In 
a country where the army does not and cannot rule, the 
public must supply the will for adequate methods. 

In order to supply the proper pressure the public must 
understand how well we are prepared, not only in ma- 
terial but in leadership, to create a great army. 

Information is available upon this point, obtained from 
the experience of our mobilization in Texas last summer, 
but it has been very generally suppressed. 

Through a mistaken idea of patriotism and through 
fear of threatened censorship most newspaper correspon- 
dents refrained from publishing the truth. 

Twenty-one employes of The Tribune were in the 
Mexican mobilization, and while none of them had the 
opportunity of seeing the whole mobilization that was 
afiforded to Mr. Gibbons in his capacity as war corre- 
spondent, they all agree that insofar as Mr. Gibbons' 
observations concern matters which came under their 
personal observation, they are entirely accurate and con- 
tain no exaggeration. 



INTRODUCTION 7 

The Tribune gladly consents to the publication of Mr. 
Gibbons' articles, believing that unless the public realizes 
how terrible was the inefficiency of the Texas mobiliza- 
tion it will not insist upon, and probably not even permit, 
the degree of military efficiency in our coming mobiliza- 
tion which alone can save us from catastrophe. 

Robert R. McCormick. 
Joseph M. Patterson. 
Editorial Offices 
Chicago Tribune 
March 9, 1917. 



CONTENTS 

I 

HOW THE LACONIA SANK 

I. In the Danger Zone 11 

II. Torpedoed at Night Without Warning .... 14 

III. The Last of the Laconia 23 

IV. Adrift in Open Boats 26 

V. The Rescue by the British Patrol 29 

VI. Landing the Survivors 31 

II 

THE MILITIA MOBILIZATION ON 
THE MEXICAN BORDER 

I. The Call to the Colors 39 

II. En Route 45 

III. In Manana Land 49 

IV. Camp Fare 53 

V. A Texas Hurricane 57 

VI. Field Training under Difficulties 59 

VII. Cavalry and Artillery not Ready 62 

VIII. Quartermaster Department Hard Put .... 68 

IX. Difficulty in Getting Supplies 74 

X. Regulars Were Patient Tutors 80 

XI. Field Hospitals 84 

XII. Delay in Granting Discharges 90 



HOW THE LACONIA SANK 



IN THE DANGER ZONE 

QuEENSTOWN, February 26, 1917. 

I HAVE serious doubts whether this is a real 
story. I am not entirely certain that it is not all 
a dream. I feel that in a few minutes I may wake 
up back in stateroom B 19 on the promenade deck 
of the Cunarder Laconia and hear my cockney 
steward informing me with an abundance of "and 
sirs" that it is a fine morning. 

It is now a little over thirty hours since I stood 
on the slanting decks of the big liner, listened to 
the lowering of the lifeboats, and heard the hiss 
of escaping steam and the roar of ascending 
rockets as they tore lurid rents in the black sky 
and cast their red glare over the roaring sea. 

I am writing this within thirty minutes after 
stepping on the dock here in Queenstown from the 



12 HOW THE LACONIA SANK 

British mine sweeper which picked up our open 
Hfeboat after an eventful six hours of drifting 
and darkness and baiHng and pulling on the oars 
and of straining aching eyes toward that empty, 
meaningless horizon in search of help. 

But, dream or fact, here it is : 

The Cunard liner Laconia, 18,000 tons bur- 
den, carrying seventy-three passengers — men, 
women, and children — of whom six were Ameri- 
can citizens — manned by a mixed crew of two 
hundred and sixteen, bound from New York to 
Liverpool, and loaded with foodstuffs, cotton, and 
war material, was torpedoed without warning by 
a German submarine last night off the Irish coast. 
The vessel sank in about forty minutes. 

Two American citizens, mother and daughter, 
listed from Chicago, and former residents there, 
are among the dead. They were Mrs. Mary E. 
Hoy and Miss Elizabeth Hoy. I have talked 
with a seaman who was in the same lifeboat with 
the two Chicago women and he has told me that 
he saw their lifeless bodies washed out of the 
sinking lifeboat. 

The American survivors are Mrs. F. E. 
Harris, of Philadelphia, who was the last woman 
to leave the Laconia; the Rev. Father Wareing, 



HOW THE LACONIA SANK 13 

of St. Joseph's Seminary, Baltimore; Arthur T. 
Kirby, of New York, and myself. 

A former Chicago woman, now the wife of a 
British subject, was among the survivors. She 
is Mrs. Henry George Boston, the daughter of 
Granger Farwell, of Lake Forest. 

After leaving New York, passengers and crew 
had had three drills with the lifeboats. All were 
supplied with life-belts and assigned to places in 
the twelve big lifeboats poised over the side from 
the davits of the top deck. 

Submarines had been a chief part of the con- 
versation during the entire trip, but the subject 
had been treated lightly, although all ordered 
precautions were strictly in force. After the first 
explanatory drill on the second day out from New 
York, from which we sailed on Saturday, Feb- 
ruary 17, the "abandon ship" signal — five quick 
blasts on the whistle — had summoned us twice to 
our life-belts and heavy wraps, among which I 
included a flask and a flashlight, and to a roll call 
in front of our assigned boats on the top deck. 

On Sunday we knew generally we were in the 
danger zone, though we did not know definitely 
where we were — or at least the passengers did 
not. In the afternoon during a short chat with 



14 HOW THE LACONIA SANK 

Captain W. R. D. Irvine, the ship's commander, 
I had mentioned that I would hke to see a chart 
and note our position on the ocean. He repHed: 
"O, would you?" with a smiling, rising inflection 
that meant, "It is jolly well none of your busi- 
ness." 

Prior to this my cheery early morning steward 
had told us that we would make Liverpool by 
Monday night and I used this information in 
another question to the captain. 

"When do we land?" I asked. 

"I don't know," replied Capt. Irvine, but my 
steward told me later it would be Tuesday after 
dinner. 

II 

TORPEDOED AT NIGHT WITHOUT WARNING 

The first cabin passengers were gathered in 
the lounge Sunday evening, with the exception of 
the bridge fiends in the smoke-room. 

"Poor Butterfly" was dying wearily on the 
talking machine and several couples were 
dancing. 

About the tables in the smoke-room the conver- 



HOW THE LACONIA SANK 15 

sation was limited to the announcement of bids 
and orders to the stewards. Before the fireplace 
was a little gathering which had been dubbed as 
the Hyde Park corner — an allusion I don't quite 
fully understand. This group had about ex- 
hausted available discussion when I projected a 
new bone of contention. 

"What do you say are our chances of being 
torpedoed?" I asked. 

"Well," drawled the deliberative Mr. Henry 
Chetham, a London solicitor, **I should say four 
thousand to one." 

Lucien J. Jerome, of the British diplomatic 
service, returning with an Ecuadorian valet from 
South America, interjected: "Considering the 
zone and the class of this ship, I should put it 
down at two hundred and fifty to one that we 
don't meet a sub." 

At this moment the ship gave a sudden lurch 
sideways and forward. There was a mufiied 
noise like the slamming of some large door at a 
good distance away. The slightness of the shock 
and the meekness of the report compared with my 
imagination were disappointing. Every man in 
the room was on his feet in an instant. 

"We're hit!" shouted Mr. Chetham. 



i6 HOW THE LACONIA SANK 

"That's what we've been waiting for," said 
Mr. Jerome. 

"What a lousey torpedo!" said Mr. Kirby in 
typical New Yorkese. "It must have been a 
fizzer." 

I looked at my watch. It was 10:30 p. m. 

Then came the five blasts on the whistle. We 
rushed down the corridor leading from the 
smoke-room at the stern to the lounge, which was 
amidships. We were running, but there was no 
panic. The occupants of the lounge were just 
leaving by the forward doors as we entered. 

It was dark on the landing leading down to the 
promenade deck, where the first class staterooms 
were located. My pocket flashlight, built like a 
fountain pen, came in handy on the landing. 

We reached the promenade deck. I rushed 
into my stateroom, B 19, grabbed my overcoat 
and the water bottle and special life-preserver 
with which The Tribune had equipped me 
before sailing. Then I made my way to the upper 
deck on that same dark landing. 

I saw the chief steward opening an electric 
switch box in the wall and turning on the switch. 
Instantly the boat decks were illuminated. That 
illumination saved lives. 



HOW THE LACONIA SANK 17 

The torpedo had hit us well astern on the star- 
board side and had missed the engines and the 
dynamos. I had not noticed the deck lights 
before. Throughout the voyage our decks had 
remained dark at night and all cabin portholes 
were clamped down and all windows covered with 
opaque paint. 

The illumination of the upper deck on which 
I stood made the darkness of the water sixty feet 
belo'w appear all the blacker when I peered over 
the edge at my station, boat No. 10. 

Already the boat was loading up and men were 
busy with the ropes. I started to help near a 
davit that seemed to be giving trouble, but was 
stoutly ordered to get out of the way and get into 
the boat. 

We were on the port side, practically opposite 
the engine well. Up and down the deck passen- 
gers and crew were donning life-belts, throwing 
on overcoats, and taking positions in the boats. 
There were a number of women, but only one 
appeared hysterical — little Miss Titsie Siklosi, a 
French-Polish actress, who was being cared for 
by her manager, Cedric P. Ivatt, appearing on 
the passenger list as from New York. 

Steam began to hiss somewhere from the giant 



i8 HOW THE LACONIA SANK 

gray funnels that towered above. Suddenly 
there was a roaring swish as a rocket soared 
upward from the captain's bridge, leaving a 
comet's tail of fire. I watched it as it described 
a graceful arc in the black void overhead, and 
then, with an audible pop, it burst in a flare of 
brilliant white light. 

There was a tilt to the deck. It was listing to 
starboard at just the angle that would make it 
necessary to reach for support to enable one to 
stand upright. In the meantime electric flood 
lights — large white enameled funnels containing 
clusters of bulbs — had been suspended from the 
promenade deck and illuminated the dark water 
that rose and fell on the slanting side of the ship. 

"Lower away !" Some one gave the order and 
we started down with a jerk towards the seem- 
ingly hungry rising and falling swells. 

Then we stopped with another jerk and re- 
mained suspended in mid-air while the man at 
the bow and the stern swore and tussled with the 
lowering ropes. The stern of the lifeboat was 
down, the bow up, leaving us at an angle of about 
forty-five degrees. We clung to the seats to 
save ourselves from falling out. 

"Who's got a knife, a knife, a knife!" shouted 
a sweating seaman in the bow. 



HOW THE LACONIA SANK 19 

"Great God, give him a knife!" bawled a half- 
dressed, jibbering negro stoker, who wrung his 
hands in the stern. 

A hatchet was thrust into my hand and I for- 
warded it to the bow. There was a flash of 
sparks as it crashed down on the holding pulley. 
One strand of the rope parted and down plunged 
the bow, too quick for the stern man. We came 
to a jerky stop with the stern in the air and the 
bow down, but the stern managed to lower away 
until the dangerous angle was eliminated. 

Then both tried to lower together. The list of 
the ship's side became greater, but, instead of our 
boat sliding down it like a toboggan, the taffrail 
caught and was held. As the lowering con- 
tinued, the other side dropped down and we found 
ourselves clinging on at a new angle and looking 
straight down on the water. 

A hand slipped into mine and a voice sounded 
huskily close to my ear. It was the little old 
German Jew^ traveling man who was disliked in 
the smoke-room because he used to speak too cer- 
tainly of things he was uncertain of and whose 
slightly Teutonic dialect made him as popular as 
smallpox with the British passengers. 

"My boy, I can't see nutting," he said. "My 



20 HOW THE LACONIA SANK 

glasses slipped and I am falling. Hold me, 
please." 

I managed to reach out and join hands with 
another man on the other side of the old man and 
together we held him in. He hung heavily over 
our arms, grotesquely grasping all he had saved 
from his stateroom — a goldheaded cane and an 
extra hat. 

Many feet and hands pushed the boat from the 
side of the ship and we sagged down again, this 
time smacking squarely on the pillowy top of a 
rising swell. It felt more solid than midair, at 
least. But we were far from being off. The 
pulleys twice stuck in their fastenings, bow and 
stern, and the one ax passed forward and back, 
and with it my flashlight, as the entangling ropes 
that held us to the sinking Laconia were cut 
away. 

Some shout from that confusion of sound 
caused me to look up and I really did so with the 
fear that one of the nearby boats was being low- 
ered upon us. 

A man was jumping, as I presumed, with the 
intention of landing in the boat and I prepared to 
avoid the impact, but he passed beyond us and 
plunged into the water three feet from the edge 



HOW THE LACONIA SANK 21 

of the boat. He bobbed to the surface imme- 
diately. 

"It's Duggan !" shouted a man next to me. 

I flashed the light on the ruddy, smiling face 
and water-plastered hair of the little Canadian, 
our fellow saloon passenger. We pulled him over 
the side. He sputtered out a mouthful of water 
and the first words he said were: 

"I wonder if there is anything to that lighting 
three cigarets off the same match? I was up 
above trying to loosen the rope to this boat. I 
loosened it and then got tangled up in it. The 
boat went down, but I was jerked up. I jumped 
for it." 

His first reference concerned our deliberate 
tempting of fates early in the day when he, Kirby, 
and I lighted three cigarets from the same match 
and Duggan told us that he had done the same 
thing many a time. 

As we pulled away from the side of the ship, 
its ranking and receding terrace of lights 
stretched upward. The ship was slowly turning 
over. We were opposite that part occupied by the 
engine rooms. There was a tangle of oars, spars, 
and rigging on the seat and considerable 
confusion before four of the big sweeps 



22 HOW THE LACONIA SANK 

could be manned on either side of the boat. 

The jibbering, bullet-headed negro was pulling 
directly behind me and I turned to quiet him as 
his frantic reaches with his oar were hitting me 
in the back. In the dull light from the upper 
decks I looked into his slanting face, eyes all 
whites and lips moving convulsively. Besides 
being frightened the man was freezing in the 
thin cotton shirt that composed his entire upper 
covering. He would work feverishly to get 
warm. 

"Get away from her; get away from her," he 
kept repeating. "When the water hits her hot 
boilers, she'll blow up, and there's just tons and 
tons of shrapnel in the hold!" 

His excitement spread to other members of 
the crew in the boat. The ship's baker, designa- 
ted by his pantry headgear, became a competing 
alarmist, and a white fireman, whose blasphemy 
was nothing short of profound, added to the con- 
fusion by cursing everyone. 

It was the give way of nerve tension. It was 
bedlam and nightmare. 



HOW THE LACONIA SANK 23 

III 

THE LAST OF THE LACONIA 

Seeking to establish some authority in our 
boat, I made my way to the stern and there found 
an old, white-haired sea captain, a second cabin 
passenger, with whom I had talked before. He 
was bound from Nova Scotia with codfish. His 
sailing schooner, the Secret, had broken in two, 
but he and his crew had been taken off by a 
tramp and taken back to New York. He had 
sailed from there on the Ryndam, which, after 
almost crossing the Atlantic, had turned back. 
The Laconia was his third attempt to get home. 
His name is Captain Dear. 

"The rudder's gone, but I can steer with an 
oar," he said. *T will take charge, but my voice 
is gone. You'll have to shout the orders." 

There was only one way to get the attention of 
the crew and that was by an overpowering blast 
of profanity. I did my best and was rewarded 
by silence while I made the announcement that 
in the absence of the ship's officer assigned to 
the boat. Captain Dear would take charge. There 
was no dissent and under the captain's orders 



24 HOW THE LACONIA SANK 

the boat's head was held to the wind to prevent 
us from being swamped by the increasing swells. 

We rested on our oars, with all eyes turned on 
the still lighted Laconia. The torpedo had struck 
at 10:30 p. M. According to our ship's time, it 
was thirty minutes after that hour that another 
dull thud, which was accompanied by a noticeable 
drop in the hulk, told its story of the second tor- 
pedo that the submarine had dispatched through 
the engine room and the boat's vitals from a dis- 
tance of 200 yards. 

We watched silently during the next minute, 
as the tiers of lights dimmed slowly from white 
to yellow, then to red, and nothing was left but 
the murky mourning of the night, which hung 
over all like a pall. 

A mean, cheese-colored crescent of a moon re- 
vealed one horn above a rag bundle of clouds low 
in the distance. A rim of blackness settled around 
our little world, relieved only by general leering 
stars in the zenith, and where the Laconia lights 
had shone there remained only the dim outline 
of a blacker hulk standing out above the water 
like a jagged headland, silhouetted against the 
overcast sky. 

The ship sank rapidly at the stern until at last 



HOW THE LACONIA SANK 25 

its nose stood straight in the air. Then it sHd 
silently down and out of sight like a piece of dis- 
appearing scenery in a panorama spectacle. 

Boat No. 3 stood closest to the ship and rocked 
about in a perilous sea of clashing spars and 
wreckage. As the boat's crew steadied its head 
into the wind, a black hulk, glistening wet and 
standing about eight feet above the surface of 
the water, approached slowly and came to a stop 
opposite the boat and not six feet from the side 
of it. 

"What ship was dot?" the correct words in 
throaty English with the German accent came 
from the dark hulk, according to Chief Steward 
Ballyn's statement to me later. 

"The Laconia," Ballyn answered. 

"Vot?" 

"The Laconia, Cunard line," responded the 
steward. 

"Vot did she weigh?" was the next question 
from the submarine. 

"Eighteen thousand tons." 

"Any passengers?" 

"Seventy-three," replied Ballyn, "men, women, 
and children, some of them in this boat. She had 
over 200 in the crew." 



26 HOW THE LACONIA SANK 

"Did she carry cargo?" 

"Yes." 

"Veil, you'll be all right. The patrol will pick 
you up soon," and without further sound, save 
for the almost silent fixing of the conning tower 
lid, the submarine moved ofif. 

"I thought it best to make my answers truthful 
and satisfactory, sir," said Ballyn when he re- 
peated the conversation to me word for word. 
"I was thinking of the women and children in 
the boat. I feared every minute that somebody 
in our boat might make a hostile move, fire a re- 
volver, or throw something at the submarine. 
I feared the consequences of such an act." 



IV 

ADRIFT IN OPEN BOATS 

There was no assurance of an early pickup, 
even though the promise were from a German 
source, for the rest of the boats whose occupants 
— if they felt and spoke like those in my boat — 
were more than mildly anxious about our plight 
and the prospects of rescue. 

We made preparations for the siege with the 



HOW THE LACONIA SANK 27 

elements. The weather was a great factor. That 
black rim of clouds looked ominous. There was a 
good promise of rain. February has a reputa- 
tion for nasty weather in the north Atlantic. The 
wind was cold and seemed to be rising. Our boat 
bobbed about like a cork on the swells, which for- 
tunately were not choppy. 

"How much rougher weather could the boat 
stand?" This question and the conditions were 
debated pro and con. 

"Had our rockets been seen?" "Did the first 
torpedo put the wireless out of business?" "Did 
anybody hear our S. O. S. ?" "Was there enough 
food and drinking water in the boat to last?" 

That brought us to an inventory of our small 
craft, and after much difficulty we found a lamp, 
a can of powder flares, a tin of ship's biscuits, 
matches, and spare oil. 

The lamp was lighted. Other lights were vis- 
ible at small distances every time we mounted 
the crest of the swells. The boats remained quite 
close together at first. One boat came within 
sound and I recognized the Harry Lauder-like 
voice of the second assistant purser, last heard on 
Wednesday at the ship's concert. There was 
singing, "I Want to Marry 'Arry," and "I Love 
to Be a Sailor." 



28 HOW THE LACONIA SANK 

Mrs. Boston was in that boat with her hus- 
band. She told me later that an attempt had been 
made to sing 'Tipperary" and ''Rule, Britannia," 
but the thought of that slinking dark hulk of 
destruction that might have been a part of the 
immediate darkness resulted in an abandonment 
of the effort. 

"Who's the officer in that boat ?" came a cheery 
hail from a nearby light. 

"What the hell is it to you?" bawled out our 
half-frozen negro, for no reason imaginable other 
than, possibly, the relief of his feelings. 

"Brain him with a pin, somebody!" yelled our 
profound oathsman, and accompanied the order 
with a warmth of language that must have re- 
lieved the negro's chill. 

The fear of some of the boats crashing 
together produced a general inclination toward 
further separation on the part of all the little 
units of survivors, with the result that soon the 
small craft stretched out for several miles, all of 
them endeavoring to keep their heads into the 
wind. 



HOW THE LACONIA SANK 29 

V 

THE RESCUE BY THE BRITISH PATROL 

And then we saw the first Hght, the first sign 
of help coming, the first searching glow of white 
brilliance, deep down on the sombre sides of the 
black pot of night that hung over us. I don't 
know what direction that came from — none of us 
knew north from south — there was nothing but 
water and sky. But the light — it just came from 
over there where we pointed. 

We nudged violently sick boat-mates and di- 
rected their gaze and aroused them to an appre- 
ciation of the sight that gave us new life. 

It was way over there — first a trembling quiver 
of silver against the blackness, then, drawing 
closer, it defined itself as a beckoning finger, al- 
though still too far away to see our feeble efforts 
to attract 

We nevertheless wasted valuable flares and 
the ship's baker, self-ordained custodian of bis- 
cuit tin, did the honors handsomely to the extent 
of a biscuit apiece to each of the twenty-three oc- 
cupants in the boat. 

"Pull starboard, sonnies," sang out old Cap- 



30 HOW THE LACONIA SANK 

tain Dear, his gray chin whiskers Hterally bris- 
thng- with joy in the Hght of the round lantern 
which he held aloft. 

We pulled lustily, forgetting the strain and 
pain of innards torn and racked from vain vom- 
iting, oblivious of blistered hands and yet half- 
frozen feet. 

Then a nodding of that finger of light — a hap- 
py, snapping, crap-shooting finger that seemed 
to say "Come on, you men," like a dice player 
wooing the bones — led us to believe that our lights 
had been seen. This was the fact, for immedi- 
ately the coming vessel flashed on its green and 
red side-lights and we saw it was headed for our 
position. 

We floated off its stern for a while as it ma- 
neuvered for the best position in which it could 
take us on with the sea that was running higher 
and higher, it seemed to me. 

"Come alongside port!" was megaphoned to 
us, and as fast as we could we swung under the 
stern and felt our way broadside toward the ship's 
side. A dozen flashlights blinked down to us and 
orders began to flow fast and thick. 

When I look back on the night, I don't know 
which was the more hazardous — our descent from 



HOW THE LACONIA SANK 31 

the Laconia or our ascent to our rescuer. One 
minute the swell lifted us almost level with the 
rail of the low-built patrol boat and mine sweeper, 
the next receding wave would carry us down into 
a gulf over which the ship's side glowed like a 
slimy, dripping cliff. A score of hands reached 
out, and we were suspended in the husky, tattooed 
arms of those doughty British jack tars, looking 
up into the weather-beaten, youthful faces, mum- 
bling thanks and thankfulness, and reading in the 
gold lettering on their pancake hats the legend 
"H. M. S. Laburnum:' 



VI 

LANDING THE SURVIVORS 

We had been six hours in the open boats, all of 
which began coming alongside one after another. 
Wet and bedraggled survivors were lifted aboard. 
Women and children first w^as the rule. 

The scenes of reunion were heart-gripping. 
Men who had remained strangers to one another 
aboard the Laconia wrung each other by the hand, 
or embraced without shame the frail little wife 
of a Canadian chaplain who had found one of 



32 HOW THE LACONIA SANK 

her missing children deHvered up from another 
boat. She smothered the child with ravenous 
mother kisses while tears of joy streamed down 
her face. 

Boat after boat came alongside. The water- 
logged craft containing the captain came last. A 
rousing cheer went up as he landed his feet on 
the deck, one mangled hand hanging limp at his 
side. 

The jack tars divested themselves of outer 
clothing and passed the garments over to the shiv- 
ering members of the Laconia's crew. 

The little officers' quarters down under the quar- 
terdeck were turned over to the women and chil- 
dren. Two of the Laconia's stewardesses passed 
boiling basins of navy cocoa and aided in the dis- 
entanglement of wet and matted tresses. 

The men grouped themselves near steam pipes 
in the petty officers' quarters or over the gratings 
of the engine rooms, where new life was to be 
had from the upward blasts of heated air that 
brought with them the smell of bilge water and 
oil and sulphur from the bowels of the vessel. 

The injured — all minor cases, sprained backs, 
wrenched legs, or mashed hands — were put away 
in bunks under the care of the ship's doctor. 



HOW THE LACONIA SANK 33 

Dawn was melting the eastern ocean gray to 
pink when the task was finished. 

In the officers* quarters, now invaded by the 
men, somebody happened to touch a key on the 
small wooden organ, and this was enough to send 
some callous seafaring fingers over the keys in a 
rhythm unquestionably religious and so irresisti- 
ble under the circumstances that, although no 
lone knew the words, the air was taken up in a 
serious humming chant by all in the room. 

At the last note of the amen, little Father Ware- 
ing, his black garb snaggled in places and badly 
soiled, stood before the center table and lifted his 
head back until the morning light, filtering 
through the open hatch above him, shone down 
on his kindly, weary face. He recited the Lord's 
Prayer, all present joined, and the simple, im- 
pressive service ended as simply as it had begun. 

Two minutes later I saw the old German Jew 
traveling man limping about on one lame leg with 
a little boy in his arms, collecting big round Brit- 
ish pennies for the youngster. 

A survey and cruise of the nearby area re- 
vealed no more occupied boats and the mine 
sweeper, with its load of survivors numbering 
267, steamed away to the east. A half-an-hour's 



34 HOW THE LACONIA SANK 

steaming and the vessel stopped within hailing 
distance of two sister ships, towards one of which 
an open boat, manned by jackies, was pulling. 

I saw the hysterical French-Polish actress, her 
hair wet and bedraggled, lifted out of the boat and 
handed up the companionway. Then a little boy, 
his fresh pink face and golden hair shining in the 
morning light, was passed upward, followed by 
some other survivors, numbering fourteen in all, 
who had been found half drowned and almost 
dead from exposure in a partially wrecked boat 
that was just sinking. 

This was the boat in which Mrs. Hoy and her 
daughter lost their lives and in which Cedric P. 
Ivatt of New York, who was the manager for the 
actress, died. It has not been ascertained here 
whether Mr. Ivatt was an American citizen or a 
British subject. 

One of the survivors of this boat was Able Sea- 
man Walley, who was transferred to the Labur- 
num. 

"Our boat — No. 8 — ^was smashed in lowering," 
he said. "I was in the bow, Mrs. Hoy and her 
daughter were sitting toward the stern. The boat 
filled with water rapidly. It was no use trying 
to bail it out — there was a big hole in the side and 



HOW THE LACONIA SANK 35 

it came in too fast. It just sunk to the water's 
edge and only stayed up on account of the tanks 
in it. It was completely awash. Every swell rode 
clear over us and we had to hold our breath until 
we came to the surface again. The cold water 
just takes the strength out of you. 

"The women got weaker and weaker, then a 
wave came and washed both of them out of the 
boat. There were life-belts on their bodies and 
they floated away, but I believe they were dead 
before they were washed overboard." 

With such stories ringing in our ears, with ex- 
changes of experiences pathetic and humorous, 
we came steaming into Queenstown harbor short- 
ly after ten o'clock tonight. We pulled up at a 
dock lined with waiting ambulances and khaki- 
clad men, who directed the survivors to the vari- 
ous hotels about the town, where they are being 
quartered. 

The question being asked of the Americans on 
all sides is : "Is it the casus belli?" 

American Consul Wesley Frost is forwarding 
all information to Washington with a speed and 
carefulness resulting from the experiences in 
handling twenty-live previous submarine disas- 
ters in which the United States has had an in- 



36 HOW THE LACONIA SANK 

terest, especially in the survivors landed at this 
port. 

His best figures on the Laconia sinking are: 
Total survivors landed here, 267 ; landed at Bant- 
ry, 14; total on board, 294; missing 13. 

The latest information from Bantry, the only 
other port at which survivors are known to have 
been landed, confirms the report of the death of 
Mrs. Hoy and her daughter. 



THE MILITIA MOBILIZATION 
ON THE MEXICAN BORDER 



THE MILITIA MOBILIZATION 
ON THE MEXICAN BORDER 



I. 



THE CALL TO THE COLORS. 

September, 1916. 

Without a single man killed in action, with- 
out a single engagement with an enemy, without 
the firing of a hostile shot, the armed civilian 
forces of the United States, numbering approxi- 
mately 100,000 men, have been drawn up in more 
or less military array along the nation's border 
for more than two months. These American cit- 
izens left their many homes and families, their 
jobs, stores, and factories, when war was in the 
air. A national crisis was at hand — or at least 
everybody was led to believe that it was. In each 
troop-train that hurried borderward, guardsmen 
were hoping and praying that hostilities would 
not begin until they had reached the firing line. 

It was a glorious sight for those who believed 



40 THE MILITIA MOBILIZATION 

that one bugle blast from the porte-cochere of the 
White House and "a million men would spring 
to arms." 

It was a disheartening spectacle but at the same 
time an "I told you so" demonstration for those 
who believe in the democracy of universal mili- 
tary service, big navy, and unquestioning support 
of American rights by force, anywhere, any time, 
anyhow. 

It is a matter of suspended judgment for anoth- 
er and larger class, which subscribes to neither 
of the extreme doctrines of the pacifist or the mil- 
itarist, but believes soundly in that poorly defined 
something called "adequate national defense." 
These "rationalists" are now ready to consider 
the performances and results of the last two 
months' pursuit of military duties on the border 
by the federalized militia. 

Our national experience in defensiveness has 
been a costly one. The government has paid mil- 
lions for the transporting and supplying of the 
men who answered the call to the colors. The 
men themselves have paid millions in lost time, 
lost salary, lost profits, lost opportunities. The 
stay-at-homes, some of them, have paid other un- 
estimated sums for the relief of militia depen- 



THE MILITIA MOBILIZATION 41 

dents. Industries crippled at a time of glorious 
shortage of labor and consequent wage prosperity 
suffered the loss of their militia employes, many 
of whom held important posts in the industrial 
organization. 

The total cost will be a difficult one to compute. 
It will be enormous. Now to take advantage of 
the expenditure. Now to get our money's worth, 
dollar for dollar; now to reap the benefits of the 
lesson, to learn what there is to be learned, what 
we have paid to learn, and credit the sum total 
cost to education. 

To begin with, there is one fact of which the 
general public is not aware. That is that the 
border mobilization was not planned by the gen- 
eral staff of the War Department. This staff is 
composed of the brains of the army for the pur- 
pose of giving the nation the benefit of scientific 
direction and management of its military affairs. 
The notion of sending untrained troops to the 
border at the time they were sent did not originate 
in the mind of the general staff. And it is the 
generally accepted belief — among regular army 
officers — that the sudden call to the border was 
diametrically opposed to the recommendations of 
the general staff. 



42 THE MILITIA MOBILIZATION 

The regular army plan for the mobilization, so 
far as it has leaked out, called for the assembly of 
the several state guards in their respective state 
concentration points where their organization was 
to be completed, the work of recruiting up to war 
strength begun, and, more important still, the 
enormous labor of completely equipping the mil- 
itiamen. Following this, the plan specified the 
mobilization of the troops in army posts in or ad- 
jacent to their states, where the men could occupy 
the barracks left empty by the departure of all 
the regular forces for the border. 

In these army posts, upon which the nation has 
spent millions of dollars, the militiamen were to 
have received their soldierly training under all the 
accommodations of barrack life, which would 
have permitted a greater application of time and 
effort on drilling and thoroughly acquainting the 
men with the use of their arms. Relieved of the 
distracting and uninteresting labor of camp house- 
keeping, the ditch digging, the brush cutting, the 
potato peeling, and sanitation drudgery, the men 
were to have devoted their entire energies to an 
intensive study of soldiering, target practice, fire 
control and distribution, field maneuvers, lectures, 
officer school, etc. 



THE MILITIA MOBILIZATION 43 

There was nothing new about the plan. It is 
in use today in the training camps in Canada, in 
Australia, and other contributing colonies of the 
entente allies, where the regiments of territorials 
are being trained and drilled at or near their 
homes, in accustomed climates while they ha- 
bituate themselves to unaccustomed work and un- 
accustomed diet. It has always been used in Ger- 
many, in France — the great military nations. 
The "seasoning" process which is concomitant 
with the scientifically abandoned deception that 
men to become soldiers must be exposed to pri- 
vations, discomforts, and a general "roughing 
it" program, has in the experience of the last few 
years been condemned as a debilitating detriment 
to individual military effectiveness. 

In Montreal the camp drudgery is done by pris- 
oners, laborers, and fighting ineflfectives. The sol- 
diers-to-be undergo ten hours' strict soldier train- 
ing daily for six days a week, and on the seventh 
they have a recreation period which permits them 
to visit the cit}'- and spend the day with their 
friends or family. The recruits are not sent far 
away to some unaccustomed climate to learn their 
new vocation. And Canada is at war. 

Although the border mobilization of the militia 



44 THE MILITIA MOBILIZATION 

was secretly condemned by the military experts, 
in view of its absolute ignoring of the general 
staff's recommendations, the War Department, 
working under the handicap of unpreparedness 
as to plans, ways, or means, applied itself 
obediently to the will of the state department or 
whatever governmental division directed the bor- 
der bungle. 

Away went the boys to the border, bands play- 
ing, flags waving, mothers crying, fathers chok- 
ing, sweethearts thrilling, cameras snapping, 
typewriters clacking, transmitters clicking, news- 
boys shouting, everybody cheering — 

Away they went to dare and do 
For the old red, white, and blue, 

Villa chasing, 

Self-effacing, 
Through the mesquite in the cactus, 
Bully boys they were that backed us, 

Double timing, 

Songsters rhyming, 
"Dolly Gray" and "Blue Bell" chiming, 

Busting greasers 

On their beezers, 
"Up and beat 'em" — ^ad infinitum. 



THE MILITIA MOBILIZATION 45 

II 

EN ROUTE 

Transportation was the first difficulty which 
betrayed the lack of industrial preparedness. The 
railroads did wonderfully well — far better than 
it was expected they could do. They had never 
done so well before. The rail managers pointed 
with pride to their achievements. Yet in moving 
100,000 men across the continent to the border, 
nothing more was accomplished than has been 
done numerous times during large national con- 
ventions or world's expositions. 

The militiamen wanted sleeping cars, and the 
minute they asked for them up went the cry of 
"mollycoddle," and the stay-at-home wits began 
to inquire whether each of the boys in khaki would 
like to have his valet in attendance throughout 
the campaign. Sleeping-cars were not necessary. 
That was proved by dozens of troop-trains of 
dingy, overloaded day-coaches from the Atlantic 
seaboard lines, which reached the Rio Grande 
valley after five and six days' railroad bufifeting, 
and discharged their weary, sleepless, unwashed 
human freight. 



46 THE MILITIA MOBILIZATION 

There were plenty of sleeping-cars. But they 
were in use by the regular traffic. You see the 
reason the militiamen asked for sleeping-cars was 
this — they felt they were the fire department an- 
swering the alarm. As such they believed they 
should have had precedence over all other traffic. 
They felt that in return for the sacrifices they 
were making in rushing to the colors, the general 
public should make some compensating sacrifice, 
particularly if such sacrifice would enable the men 
to reach the border sooner and in better condition. 

'*We can get along without sleepers all right," 
one Massachusetts infantryman told me as he and 
his company detrained from dilapidated Boston 
and Albany day coaches in El Paso. "We can 
travel in box cars if there is the necessity, but 
there has been no need of it. You can satisfy 
your hunger all right with a cup of black coffee 
and three hardtack, but there is no use eating that 
stuff if there is roast beef and potatoes in front 
of you, or even a Saturday night mess of 'Boston 
baked.' " 

And speaking of food recalls the disquieting 
dispatches from Cleveland and other points where 
the headlines shoot home twinges of responsibil- 
ity with "Militia en Route Riot for Food," 



I 



THE MILITIA MOBILIZATION 47 

"Guardsmen Storm Restaurants," and "Sol- 
diers Leave Trains to Raid Grocery Stores." 
"Food riots" is the phrase to which we were ac- 
customed only in connection with British stories 
of conditions in Germany or our own unemploy- 
ment problem. 

The food shortag-e on the troop trains was at- 
tributed to three causes. They were: Insuffi- 
ciency of supplies, untastefulness of diet, and poor 
management of what supplies there were. Some 
New Yorkers told me that they made the entire 
trip on hardtack and water — prison fare. Some 
with private funds were able to purchase sand- 
wiches at wayside stations, but officers who do- 
nated large sums to the relief of their men on the 
trip found many instances where they were un- 
able to buy food in sufficient quantities. Many 
were the telegrams that were sent on in advance 
of the troop-trains to have 2,000 hard-boiled eggs 
waiting at such and such a station at such and 
such a time, and many were the disappointments 
and belt tightenings when the food failed to ap- 
pear. 

It is admitted that there was much wastage of 
supplies and there is no, question that "wilful 
waste" drew its complement of "woeful want." 



48 THE MILITIA MOBILIZATION 

Lack of experience on the part of the guardsmen 
was the reason. Empty stomach travehng ended 
upon the arrival of the miHtiamen in the south- 
west — the happy hunting ground of the real 
estate gentry, the land of salesmen, the colony 
builders, and the town lot peddlers. 

Thus it was that the militiamen, detrained at 
their respective destinations along the border, 
were marched forth to the edges of the pros- 
pective metropolis at which they had landed and 
there introduced to the brush-covered jungle 
which they were to improve and change to the site 
for a future town addition. 

In many of the towns the industrious booster 
bund had sent gangs of Mexican laborers through 
the brush to decimate the undergrowth with 
their machetes, and in other places to lay water 
piping for the company streets which had been 
planned hurriedly by the regular army officers in 
charge of designating the camp sites. The men 
went to work with a will, clearing the brush, dig- 
ging draining ditches, hauling, carting, carrying. 

In Brownsville the Iowa brigade landed and 
took the first look at its future home. Cactus 
and mesquite, Spanish dagger and ebony brush, 
mud, water, heat and insects were the tenants to 



THE MILITIA MOBILIZATION 49 

be ousted. Animal and vegetable life alike wore 
horns and thorns, stickers and prickers, stingers 
and biters. Fleas and flies, mosquitoes and chig- 
gers, blister bugs and buzzing beetles, tarantulas, 
scorpions, centipedes of all sizes and colors, 
snakes of varying length, complexion and dispo- 
sition, all joined with the local chamber of com- 
merce in extending a rousing welcome. 

III. 

IN MANANA LAND 

It WAS the same throughout that tropical strip 
which is called the lower Rio Grande valley and 
which bears the military designation of the 
Brownsville district. It was slightly different but 
no better, to the north and west along the sandy 
desert wastes to the border river. Westward 
from El Paso along the boundary lines the scen- 
ery changed to a more somber desolate hue, the 
air became lighter, the sun seemingly stronger, 
but the average condition of the militiamen was 
pretty much the same as those tucked away in the 
geographical end of all things where the Rio 
Grande, the Gulf of Mexico, the United States 
of America, and the Dis-United States of Mex- 
ico collide. 



so THE MILITIA MOBILIZATION 

For seemingly unending hours, days, and 
weeks the guardsmen labored on their improve- 
ment work, their town addition building, their 
road construction, their camp housekeeping du- 
ties — ''knitting," as the men called it. White in- 
habitants of the 'Unanana land" frontier looked 
on and marveled. "White men," which is the 
nomenclature for those who are not Mexicans, 
complimented the display of northern "pep" with 
which the guardsmen attacked the work in front 
of them. In the Rio Grande tropics such labor 
is done only by Mexicans, of whom there are 
thousands who work for from fifty cents to 
one dollar a day. 

The colonel of an Iowa regiment showed me 
his men, tugging away at loaded transport 
wagons, working in the places of the absent army 
mules, to drag the loaded vehicles away from the 
camp and dump the collected refuse. The regi- 
ment was shy on mules. The men had to place 
their shoulders to the yoke. 

The duration of this labor and the extent to 
which it interfered with the training of the men 
is officially hinted in a recent published state- 
ment from General Parker, commander of the 
B.rownsville district. When domestic pressure 



THE MILITIA MOBILIZATION 51 

was being applied to bring about the recall of the 
First Illinois cavalry to its home state, General 
Parker, in advising against the recall, said that 
the regiment had almost completed the fatigue 
work and was just ready to get some good train- 
ing. This was after the pick and shovel exercise 
had lasted three months. 

The medical officers were determined to pre- 
vent a repetition of Chattanooga and Montauk 
Point. Intensive sanitation, that peace-time oc- 
cupation which keeps idle soldiers busy after they 
are trained, was pursued vigorously. In some 
of the camps it became necessary to dig long 
drainage ditches to carry off the surface water, 
which increased the insect life to a menace. The 
size of these works might be inferred from the 
names with which the men dubbed them — "the 
Panama Canal," ''the English Channel," and 
"Gondola Avenue." 

Construction of latrines, mess-halls, inciner- 
ators, the oiling of stagnant water, hauling and 
similar labors engaged the time and energy of 
the northerners and northwesterners and north- 
easterners, under the direct rays of a tropical sun 
which drove the mercury up to 127 and even be- 
yond. 



52 THE MILITIA MOBILIZATION 

I stood one day in front of the quarters of 
Brigadier General Dyer of the Second New York 
brigade, at McAllen, Texas, and saw the ther- 
mometer register 125. By placing the palm of the 
hand on the glass the mercury could be made to 
fall almost to blood heat. 

"We are human refrigerators," one of the gen- 
eral's aids said. 

'T think the thermometer is wrong," observed 
the general. 

He brought another instrument from within 
his quarters and replaced the first one in the sun. 
We stood by and watched the indicator rise from 
98 to 118 degrees. 

It was in such igneous air as this that the citi- 
zen soldier jumped into work which only Mexican 
peons, weazened and withered as to exterior but 
wiry and enduring as to internal arrangement, 
attempted to perform in this part of the country. 
I heard Texans of long border experience say 
they would mutiny if forced to such extremes. 

Of course, there was no mutiny. The men 
stood the gaff. They stood it like good fellows. 
Certainly it was hot. They became dizzy from 
the sun. Climatic combinations tended to debili- 
tate, to sap strength and stamina, but they bore 



THE MILITIA MOBILIZATION 53 

it. Unaccustomed to the work, unaccustomed to 
the cHmate, unaccustomed to the diet, they went 
at whatever was put before them with bhnd faith 
in the beHef that it was making soldiers of them. 
Every man in the national guard wanted to be 
a soldier. 

IV 

CAMP FARE 

There was much difficulty with the food, but 
most of the blame devolved upon the shoulders 
of the cooks, who were untrained in the prepara- 
tion of army rations. The depot quartermaster, 
as far as I was able to learn, was never remiss 
in his supplies of coffee, bacon, hardtack, beans, 
and flour. The supplies, dealt out on the basis 
of twenty-six cents' worth per day per man, were 
seldom missing, but it was a diet which the men 
found hard to stomach day after day. Said a 
V^irginia infantryman one day, as I was walking 
through his company street at mess time: "This 
is the same grub the army deals out to the men 
up in Alaska in midwinter. I wonder why we 
can't get some fresh vegetables. That's all they 
are supposed to produce in this valley." 

Leaden pellets of uncooked rice are far from 



54 THE MILITIA MOBILIZATION 

appetizing, and the fact that the cook is a friend 
of yours and you know that he is doing the best 
he can doesn't reHeve the indigestion and intes- 
tinal disorders that are sure to follow. Ptomaine 
poison was certain to break out, and it did. There 
were 203 serious cases of the poisoning in one 
Minnesota regiment at Llano Grande on account 
of canned stufifs. The cooks of the regiment re- 
ported that when they jabbed a knife into some 
of the cans of tomatoes which were issued to 
them the cans immediately spouted blood-red gey- 
sers of sour catsup. 

When the grumbling about the food began 
there was a marked improvement, and in many 
regiments regular army cooks arrived, tardily, to 
explain cuisine mysteries to their civilian prote- 
ges. Competent cooks could have been obtained, 
but the army will not pay the wages of an as- 
sistant cook at a third-class restaurant in the 
"loop." 

Private funds, both individual and collective, 
went far toward satisfying the militiamen's 
healthy craving for a more varied diet than the 
army ration permitted. Infantry companies from 
the southern part of Minnesota supplemented their 
messes by purchases from company funds which 



THE MILITIA MOBILIZATION 55 

ranged all the way from $200 to $2,000, raised 
from public subscriptions back in the towns from 
which the companies came. The "boys" looked 
upon that fund as a life saver after a few weeks 
of the heavy, heatening "chow." 

With the arrival of the militiamen numerous 
restaurants sprang up over night in the nearby 
towns and on the edges of the camps. Quite fre- 
quently these institutions contributed momentary 
satiety to the hunger gnawing, but subsequently 
internal revolutions, too. Brownsville news- 
papers editorially advocated the establishment of 
food inspection in these "eating houses." By 
way of comparison with the tiresome camp fare, 
it was worth a trial, anyway, and men who could 
afford it ate in town as frequently as their pocket- 
books and camp leave would permit. 

In Mc Allen, the headquarters for the New York 
division, one Greek met another Greek, and of 
course, they opened up a restaurant, under the 
sign "Jack's Branch, 2,500 Miles From Broad- 
way." In Brownsville the "Chicago Bar" ad- 
vertised free lunch, while the Manhattan and 
Oriental Cafe presented elaborate bills of fare, 
from which at times diners could select some- 
thing that happened to be in stock. At San An- 



56 THE MILITIA MOBILIZATION 

tonio and El Paso there was real food to be had — 
regular meals, with music and lights and danc- 
ing, roof gardens, cabarets, all to supply a change 
from the *'come-and-get-it" stuff. 

Dainty tastes and finick)^ appetites were put to 
rout b}' the stomachs that had to supply the 
steam for all the work that had to be done. The 
enormous amount of camp labor, which is well 
called "fatigue," and the order of General Fun- 
ston interfered greatly with the real soldier train- 
ing of the men. It was decreed that the men were 
not to be drilled or placed on hard fatigue between 
the hours of lo a. m. and 3 p. m., on account of the 
heat. This order was followed as closely as the 
troop commanders could, although there were 
numerous unnecessary exceptions. The regi- 
mental veterinarians heartily concurred in the or- 
der, because they had in mind the condition of 
the few horses possessed by the regiment, of 
which approximately ten per cent were on the 
sick picket line most of the time. 



THE MILITIA MOBILIZATION 57 

V 

A TEXAS HURRICANE 

Again, the destructiveness of the rain and 
wind storms seemed to make the fatigue almost 
interminable. After rains, drill schedules would 
have to be abandoned for days while new ditches 
were dug or old ones deepened or extended, or 
surface water drained, or oiled, or blown-down 
tents re-erected and patched together. One night 
the wind and rain were so intense that the ma- 
jority of the 40,000 men in the valley found 
themselves shelterless and forced to abandon 
their camps for the more stable habitations of 
the nearest town. General Parker's orders on 
that day read : 

HEADQUARTERS BROWNSVILLE DISTRICT, 
Brownsville, Texas, 

August 18, 1916. 
From : District Commander. 
To: All commanding officers of troops in Brownsville 

Camps. 
Subject: Preparation for storm. 

1. In view of the increasing severity of the storm and 
the weather prophecy that it will not reach its height of 
violence until near midnight tonight, it may be necessary 
to take temporary shelter in the town of Brownsville. In 



58 THE MILITIA MOBILIZATION 

that case the commanding general directs assignment of 
shelter as follows : 

Iowa brigade, brigade headquarters and First regiment 

to city hall. 
Second Iowa to public school building. 
Third Iowa and company of Iowa engineers to the 

courthouse. 
First Illinois cavalry, new schoolhouse. 
Virginia Troops. 

First regiment to Fort Brown. 

Second regiment to moving picture theaters. 
One battalion Iowa field artillery to Hinckley hall. 
All field hospitals and ambulance companies on Victoria 

Heights to the new base hospital. 
Thirty-sixth infantry to any shelter in the vicinity of 

their camp south of Levee street. Suggested freight 

and passenger depots or large mills or warehouses 

along railroad. 
Battery D, Fifth field artillery, to quartermaster's depot 

at rice mill. 

2. Any detachments of troops left unprovided for to 
Fort Brown. Detachments under an officer will be left in 
each camp to look after public animals and government 
property. 

3. The regiments will march equipped for the field and 
carry two days' cooked rations and receptacles for making 
cofifee; candles and lamps will be taken. 

4. Officers will remain with their organizations. 
By command of Brigadier General Parker. 

F. McCoy, 
Captain Third Cavalry, Acting Chief of Staff. 



THE MILITIA MOBILIZATION 59 

The only camp in the storm district not blown 
down was that of the First Illinois cavalry, which 
had been floored and framed by private subscrip- 
tion raised by Colonel Foreman after Secretary of 
War Baker had refused the recommendation of 
the local commanders for lumber. 

VI 

FIELD TRAINING UNDER DIFFICULTIES 

These conditions, ever recurring during the 
ten weeks in which I observed the militiamen, 
prevented adequate training. Other detracting 
features were lack of facilities for training and 
lack of equipment. Many of the regiments were 
on the border six weeks without having as much 
as fired one single practice shot. 

At San Benito, the camp of the First Oklahoma 
infantry, I talked with Captain Jarboe, who four 
years ago was the champion long distance rifle 
shot of the world. He said that his men only 
theoretically knew how to insert a cartridge into 
the chambers of their rifles. No ammunition had 
been issued to them. There had been no target 
practice for the regiment since the state encamp- 



6o THE MILITIA MOBILIZATION 

merit the year before, and with the organization 
increased about fifty per cent by recruits, he said 
he beheved there were some men in the regiment 
who had never fired a gun. 

The Iowa and Virginia brigades at Browns- 
ville were in little better condition. The first 
night, sentries from among these boys from the 
prairies and the Blue Ridge walked their lonely 
posts on the edge of the clearings, their guns were 
empty and so were their belts. "If anybody had 
tried to jump our camp, we would have had to 
club 'em back," said an lowan. 

At Llano Grande, where Brigadier General 
Lewis commanded the provisional division com- 
posed of Indiana, Minnesota, Nebraska, and 
North Dakota troops, a month and a half had 
expired before arrangements had been made to 
train the men in the actual firing of their rifles. 

Then the training was conducted on a min- 
iature scale. The size and range of the targets 
were reduced to suit cramped accommodations. 
The targets were located only lOO feet from the 
firing line. The men started to train in small num- 
bers at these "shooting gallery" ranges, and many 
of them confessed that they had no idea of a dis- 
tance of 500 yards, which is the battle-sight range 



THE MILITIA MOBILIZATION 6i 

with the Springfield rifles. The range of this gun 
extends to 2,000 yards and more, a distance at 
which the American soldier with his high- 
powered, long-range weapon would have the ad- 
vantage over Mexicans armed with shorter range 
pieces. But throughout the first two months of 
the border mobilization even such practice was 
limited. 

At San Antonio, apparently there w^as no avail- 
able space for field exercises or target practice, 
because the infantry regiments, long before they 
had been completely shod, were marched twenty 
miles or more to practice grounds where they 
could do target work and maneuvers. Through 
this arrangement the efficiency of the men was 
reduced, not only by the heat of the unaccustomed 
marches in w^iich hundreds collapsed, but the dis- 
comforts attendant upon living in pup-tents and 
the scarcity of water supply. 

The Illinois artillery arrived at San Antonio 
with only one battery that had even fired a 
shot. A month later when the batteries went to 
Leon Springs for maneuvers and practice, regu- 
lar army instructors severely criticised the organ- 
ization and said that they would be worse than 
useless in field operations owing to their slowness 



62 THE MILITIA MOBILIZATION 

in taking and leaving positions and manipulating 
the guns. Nevertheless, the batteries were re- 
stricted to a few rounds of ammunition with 
which to attempt improvement. The Minnesota ar- 
tillery at Llano Grande had had only sub-caliber 
practice — which means aiming a cannon and fir- 
ing a pistol blank cartridge. 

VII 

CAVALRY AND ARTILLERY NOT READY 

Non-uniformity of equipment resulted in 
further reduction of efficiency, not to mention the 
military appearance of the guardsmen. Some wore 
khaki of one hue, some of another ; some had leg- 
gings of one vintage and some of another; some 
had the back packs of the latest model and others 
had the old smother rolls that were over the left 
shoulder, complemented by a cumbersome haver- 
sack dangling from the left hip. Some had the 
new bottle canteens and others had the old pan- 
cake variety. 

These incongruities extended into the vital 
matter of arms. In a cavalry regiment at 
Brownsville some of the men carried the new 



THE MILITIA MOBILIZATION 63 

regulation automatic pistols, while the rest were 
provided with an old issue sidearm of the revolver 
type. This meant that the regiment would have 
to depend upon being supplied with two different 
kinds of ammunition, 38-caliber cartridges for 
the old revolvers and 45-caliber shells for the 
new automatics. In addition, some of the troops 
had the old curved sabers and others had the 
new lance sabers, each calling for a different set 
of regulations covering their use. An assorted 
shipment of saddles, some of one color leather, 
some of another, completed the hodgepodge. 

The lack of horses was felt by all of the militia 
organizations. The infantry regiments could not 
get enough mounts for officers and orderlies or 
mules for the transport wagons. This handicap 
greatly interfered with and consequently pro- 
longed the camp work, which meant just that 
much more time away from drilling. Again, the 
lack of transport prevented the foot regiments 
from attempting extended marches as regiments 
and removed the possibility of their ever cross- 
ing the border, if the order for invasion had been 
received. 

It is no recent knowledge that an army travels 
on its stomach and without transport service a 



64 THE MILITIA MOBILIZATION 

regiment is without supplies for the traveling bel- 
lies. Consequently it would be able to advance 
just as far as the food carried individually by the 
men would take them. 

Artillery regiments were in almost the same 
fix. Not only were most of them unable to obtain 
mules for their combat wagons, but horses to 
drag the field pieces were missing. The Iowa 
artillery at Brownsville didn't have enough 
horses. The Illinois batteries arrived with only 
a handful of horses, hardly sufficient to haul a 
small portion of their armament and supply 
trains. The Indiana artillery at Llano Grande 
was able to move about as far as a coast defense 
fort; the Minnesota artillery at the same place 
could just as well have changed its military des- 
ignation from field artillery to stationary artillery. 
The New York artillery brigade had horses 
enough for one and a half regiments when I 
visited it two months after its arrival at the 
''front." 

"Dead horses" was the name which the men 
applied to the majority of the animals which were 
received from the government. Most of them were 
undersized, soft, and sickly. The picket lines of 
the veterinarians usually had ten per cent of the 



THE MILITIA MOBILIZATION 65 

unit's horseflesh under treatment for influenza, 
catarrh, and shipping fever. Frequent appHca- 
tions of creosote were necessary to keep the ani- 
mals from being devoured by ticks and insects. 
When one miHtia outfit at Brownsville brought its 
horses to Fort Brown to have them shod, the 
regular army veterinarians refused to permit the 
animals in the same corral with the regular army 
horses on account of the condition of the militia 
live stock. 

Then there was the matter of horseshoes, or 
rather there wasn't the matter of horseshoes. 
The matter really was that there were no horse- 
shoes. Our cavalry and artillery horses were 
barefooted. It wasn't so bad when the ground 
was soft from the rains, but when the road be- 
came hard and baked under the sun equination 
ceased or was indulged in with utmost care on 
account of the barefooted condition of the horses. 
The First Illinois cavalry after weeks of requi- 
sitioning received some horseshoes, but not enough 
to shoe the regiment and not more than enough 
to shoe the front feet of the insufficient number 
of horses which the regiment had. In all mounted 
regiments the scarcity of horseshoes and quite 
frequently the absence of tools and horseshoeing 



66 THE MILITIA MOBILIZATION 

outfits would have made horseshoeing out of the 
question, even if horseshoes had been obtainable. 

At Llano Grande, Batteries A, B, and C of 
Indiana were without horseshoes, although after 
six weeks they had received horses. Because the 
horses were barefooted the officers had to drill 
the artillerymen on foot. The guardsmen manned 
the field pieces as they used to back in their In- 
diana armories every Thursday night, and went 
through stationary firing drills, but mounted prac- 
tice was out of the question. 

Of this Indiana battalion one ofificer told me that 
none of the men in the organization had fired a 
real shot in more than a year and that there were 
some of the recruits who had never heard a can- 
non fired. He said that arrangements were being 
made with Fort Brown to transport the men of 
the Indiana units to Brownsville on motor trucks 
and there borrow the guns of the Iowa artillery 
for firing practice on old Palo Alto battlefield, ten 
miles out of that town. This meant, if carried out, 
that the gunners would practice marksmanship on 
one set of guns and then, if needed in battle, would 
try their luck on an entirely different set. 

The Minnesota artillery at Llano Grande could 
not move because of the universal discrepancy be- 



THE MILITIA MOBILIZATION 67 

tween sizes of the horses' necks and the sizes of 
the army steel collars. The collars did not fit and 
apparently were not possible of an adjustment that 
would make them fit. The result was that ex- 
tended mounted drill was impracticable and offi- 
cers of the battalion were trying to arrange to 
have the pieces dragged to Brownsville behind 
motor trucks so that the men could get some much 
needed firing practice. Palo Alto battlefield was 
the only place in the valley where the army could 
secure a sufficient expanse of unpopulated land 
for artillery practice, and its flatness, absence of 
ridges and rolling country made the test of up- 
to-date indirect firing out of the question. 

The First New York cavalry and its fashion- 
able satellite, Squadron A, brought most of their 
horses with them to McAllen, where they were 
placed in camp with a twenty-acre swamp on one 
side of them and the brigade dump on the other 
side. The swamp contributed mosquitoes and the 
dump incubated flies and gnats. I watched a 
trooper in this camp as he conveyed a spoonful of 
beans from his mess kit to his mouth. He lifted 
the spoon with his left hand while with his right 
hand he fanned it to protect it from insects on the 
trip to the mouth. Two men conversing in the open 



68 THE MILITIA MOBILIZATION 

took on the appearance of a prize ring contest, or 
pantomime, or a case of St. Vitus's dance. The 
helpless horses were subjected to a constant night- 
and-day irritation from the hungry swarms. 

I talked with the colonel of the First New York 
horse for ten minutes and became exhausted from 
swinging hands and arms in front of my face and 
head to keep the horde of insects in motion. 

"We're going to move to another site," the 
colonel said. "We can't stand it here." 

Neither could I. 



VIII 

QUARTERMASTER DEPARTMENT HARD PUT 

The divisional cavalry of New York was fortu- 
nate in completing its quota of horses. One of its 
officers happened to be detailed to the horse pur- 
chasing board in San Antonio, with the result that 
his regiment was probably the first and possibly 
the only completely mounted militia cavalry unit 
on the border. 

The First Illinois cavalry attempted three 
practice marches with its horses. Only one squad- 
ron could ride at a time, because to put one squad- 



THE MILITIA MOBILIZATION 69 

ron on horse left the other two squadrons on 
the ground. The horses walked about eighteen 
miles on each of the two days. They marched 
at a rate less than two and a quarter miles per 
hour, which is also less than the infantry rate. 
These marches so exhausted the horses that 
the third squadron never had its march. 

On the contrary there was no mounted drill 
for four days. The reason was that the two short 
walks had made the horses unfit for immediate 
use. During the four days, the cavalrymen 
drilled on foot or went back to pick and shovel 
exercises. After two months' presence on the 
border this regiment, when ordered to move 
twenty-six miles to Point Isabel for maneuvers, 
had to send a large number of its men on motor 
trucks. 

I know one cavalryman in that regiment who 
told me he had never been on a horse. I heard 
another one paraphrase an old burlesque gag. He 
said, "If I had a saddle, I would take a ride if 
I had a horse." Yes, it is true that the regiment 
did not have enough saddles. Frantic appeals to 
San Antonio finally brought a shipment of sad- 
dles, but not enough. The cases that contained 
them bore the date "1898," I was told by a lieu- 



70 THE MILITIA MOBILIZATION 

tenant who opened them and found the saddles 
to be of black leather and an ancient issue. The 
dry hide crackled with the salt with which it had 
become impregnated when it was under the Gal- 
veston flood. 

The leather tore almost like paper. A charge, 
an extra pressure on the stirrup, a parting of the 
straps, a plunge over the horse's head, a broken 
neck. It all happened except the broken neck. 
The trooper was only stunned. 

Concerning military equipment the American 
layman's knowledge is usually confined to a recol- 
lection that it is all marked "U. S." On a train 
through the camps of the Brownsville district I 
sat behind an officer's wife. She was from Chi- 
cago. We were passing rows of tents that bore 
the black stamp "L C." 

'T thought they were all marked *U. S.'," she 
said to her seat mate. "What is 'L C for? Oh, 
I know; they are railroad tents; the government 
borrowed them from the Illinois Central." 

A lieutenant across the aisle corrected her. 

" T. C means 'Inspected and Condemned,' " 
he said, and added : "And there are tons of equip- 
ment through this valley that the inspectors 
haven't stamped yet." 



THE MILITIA MOBILIZATION 71 

It was '1. C." canvas, in holes and shreds, that 
covered the sick of the Fourth United States in- 
fantry at Fort Brown. There were the sick men, 
there was the ragged tentage over them, there 
was the convicting lettering "I. C." And for 
the tenting which the inspectors had kindly miss- 
ed because there was no new canvas to replace 
it, the elements stamped their further condemna- 
tion with more rents and tears. 

"I. C." is better than no canvas at all, and so 
it was that all organizations clung with deathlike 
grip to what they had and prayed that it would 
last until new covering could be obtained. Much 
of it failed. Little of the tentage was uniform or 
new. There were white tents and brown tents, 
pyramidal tents and conical Sibleys, and wall tents 
of all sizes. "J^st like the gypsies," said one offi- 
cer of an El Paso camp as he waved his hand at 
the assortment. 

The machine gun troop of the First New York 
cavalry had no tents at all, and after six weeks in 
the federal service its members were still bunking 
around the regiment in the tents of other troops. 
The regular limit of occupants for one of the new 
pyramidal tents is eight men, but a large number 
of these tents were crowded with ten occupants. 



72 THE MILITIA MOBILIZATION 

Eight companies of the Third Indiana infantry 
were without camp tentage from June 1 1 , the day 
of their arrival at Llano Grande, until July 24, and 
rain fell in torrents much of the time. "We were 
an example of unpreparedness," one officer told 
me. 

This regiment had cots for half of the men after 
six weeks in camp, during which time the men 
who could not purchase cots from private funds 
were sleeping on the ground — the mud, because 
there had been no lumber for flooring issued. 
Many of the men improvised flooring from boxes, 
crates, fence boards, barn doors, or any nearby 
lumber that wasn't chained down. 

In this connection I recall that a dismantled 
brick property on the edge of the First Illinois 
cavalry camp at Brownsville underwent a grad- 
ual metamorphosis, by which it became a much 
envied causeway through the mud of one troop 
street, with enough left over to make a piazza 
for the regimental hospital tent. That private 
brick pile seemed to melt away like salt before 
the nightly visits of the foragers. 

Llano Grande, after two months' occupation, 
contributed one Venetian efl^ect which was a 
source of much complaint on the part of the 



THE MILITIA MOBILIZATION 73 

regiments to Brigadier General Lewis, the camp 
commander. The First Indiana and the Third 
Minnesota figuratively changed themselves from 
infantry to naval reserve units by reason of the 
large lake which formed on the drill grounds and 
then extended its placid surface over portions of 
both regimental sites. 

The Minnesota exchange was a mud splattered 
island, approached over causeways of pop bottle 
crates. The officers' baths and latrines were fifty 
feet distant from visible land. Two company 
streets were completely flooded and their occu- 
pants forced to move. In some places this lake was 
eighteen inches deep and it stayed there for three 
weeks. 

With no changes of clothing, the men would 
plow through this mud — deep gumbo, which 
worked up into a doughlike substance in the un- 
floored tents — and then lie down in it to sleep, 
unless they were lucky enough to have cots. The 
dampness, the heat, the noxious mists, and ground 
vapors which covered man, horse, and equipment 
with moisture through the night, and the lack of 
changes of shoes and clothing spread general dis- 
comfort among the guardsmen, in spite of the fine 
spirit which they and their officers displayed in 



74 THE MILITIA MOBILIZATION 

their efforts to overcome the handicaps placed in 
their way. 

IX 

DIFFICULTY IN GETTING SUPPLIES 

Many of the men needed mosquito netting. 
The presence of dengue fever among the troops 
brought forth medical and official denials for three 
weeks and correspondents reporting affirmatively 
on the subject were publicly consigned to the Ana- 
nias class and threatened with expulsion from 
the camps, censorship, and other official hin- 
drances. 

Yet at the ends of three weeks the doctors ad- 
mitted that there were cases of dengue fever in 
the camps and hospitals of some of the organiza- 
tions, and General Parker sent the official warning 
up the valley that dengue was prevalent in the 
district, that it was epidemic at Brownsville. The 
men who had not been told through some news- 
paper reports were acquainted with the fact that 
the fever was communicated by mosquitoes, and, 
accordingly, orders were issued that all were to 
sleep under netting. 

Everybody did — who had netting. But many 



THE MILITIA MOBILIZATION 75 

of the organizations did not have netting, and 
could not get it unless they purchased it from 
private funds, as some of the regiments finally 
did. In some places where "mosquito bar" was 
issued the men complained about using it on ac- 
count of its ultra exclusiveness. It not only ex- 
cluded the insects, but it excluded the air. It was 
not netting. It was cheesecloth. 

The First Minnesota infantry lacked govern- 
ment issue cots and flooring for weeks, and pur- 
chased quantities of the former articles from pri- 
vate funds at the rate of $1.75 apiece. Cots, floor- 
ing and mosquito netting were the principal equip- 
ment needs of the New York division number- 
ing 17,000. In a country where rain approached 
a cloudburst, floors and cots are most essential to 
health, and screening or cloth netting becomes 
almost a matter of life and death to protect the 
men from the hordes of tropical insects. 

The government at first refused to honor the 
repeated requisitions for lumber. Later this in- 
humanity was rescinded, but not until the militia- 
men had spent thousands of dollars of their own 
to buy such necessities. 

In the Iowa and Virginia brigades at Browns- 
ville, before the issue of the government lumber. 



-je THE MILITIA MOBILIZATION 

squads and companies would pool funds to pur- 
chase lumber and construct the needed flooring. 
For weeks there were no wooden latrines in the 
Iowa camp, and oil in sufficient quantities to in- 
cinerate the pollution could not be obtained from 
the government, although Texas ranks among the 
greatest oil-producing states in the country. 
Colonel Bennett of the Third Iowa, a veteran 
commander who led his regiment through the 
Philippine campaigns, bravely put into words that 
which many another officer feared to breathe. 

"The conditions under which this regiment has 
been ordered to go into camp are the worst that 
I have ever encountered in my twenty-five years' 
experience in the national guard and the federal 
service," Colonel Bennett told me. 

From Staunton, Virginia, the birthplace of 
President Wilson, commander-in-chief of the 
army, came a machine gun company without 
mules to carry the machine guns, if there had 
been any. Popular subscription provided machine 
guns for one organization that was without this 
instrument which is necessary to modern war- 
fare, and forced the war department to buy the 
machine guns lacking in other regiments. Popu- 
lar subscription also provided moving soup kitch- 



THE MILITIA MOBILIZATION 'jy 

ens with which the soldiers could be fed on the 
march, after the fashion of the German, French, 
English, Russian, and Japanese armies. Private 
funds supplied numerous automobiles used in the 
government service. 

For weeks these men in training took their 
food under almost the same conditions that it is 
consumed by men in the trenches. Squatting on 
the ground, in the dust or in the mud, the men ate 
from their mess kits while ponderous, slow-mov- 
ing machinery at Washington tried to arrange for 
lumber appropriations. When the lumber was 
received for mess halls, kitchens, flooring, and 
latrines, all hands laid off drill for another long 
period while enough hammers or saws could be 
borrowed or privately bought or rented to erect 
buildings. 

Open cesspools in the ground took the place 
of incinerators for weeks while the regiments 
waited for material to build this sanitary essen- 
tial. When it rained, the crude containers, as well 
as the latrines, became flooded and carried pollu- 
tion all overi the camps. When it was windy, 
ashes and half-burned particles of refuse were 
spread about while odors of a crematory prevailed. 
When bricks were received for the incinerators, 



78 THE MILITIA MOBILIZATION 

cement was missing. Other regiments had bricks 
and cement, but no trowels. 

Company B of the First Minnesota did not have 
enough blankets to go around. The second regi- 
ment from the same state was shy shelter halves. 
The Third regiment reached the border with an 
embarrassing deficiency of shirts and pants, I 
was told. I saw Virginia noncommissioned offi- 
cers drilling, and some of them wore derby hats 
and stiff straw head gear. Some had leggings 
and some did not and some wore civilian shirts. 

And Bryan's state — Nebraska. A month and 
a half after their arrival on the border the Fifth 
Nebraska infantry was still in need of shoes for 
the entire regiment. 

The regiment had not received cots and was 
sleeping in the mud, as there were no floors. 
There were two companies without blankets, and 
the rest of the regiment, before leaving its state 
camp, had received a carload of gray cotton 
blankets. 

Concerning blankets, on September 15 Gov- 
ernor Dunne of Illinois petitioned the war depart- 
ment to grant a furlough of ten days for the en- 
tire First and Second infantry regiments, then at 
Springfield, on the ground that the men were suf- 



THE MILITIA MOBILIZATION 79 

fering from the cold and did not have enough 
equipment to keep them warm. 

But there were additional discomforts suffered 
by the Nebraska regiment, which arrived on the 
border on July 14. Until August 27 the men 
were without underwear with the exception of the 
single privately owned suit they had worn when 
they left their homes. On that day they received 
the first issue of undershirts, six hundred of which 
were size 45. Line officers of the organization 
told me that there were not 100 men in the regi- 
ment who could fit into a garment larger than 
size 40 and that the greater number needed 36's. 
Company B of the Fifth, coming from Bryan's 
home, Lincoln, Nebraska, arrived on the border 
lacking hats, shoes, pants, and leggings to the 
regulation amount. 

Inadequate transportation only increased the 
difficulties of supplying the men. Three hundred 
miles of single track railroad is all that connects 
the lower Rio Grande valley with the rest of the 
country. Everything that reached the valley 
had to come over the single line of the St. Louis, 
Brownsville and Mexico. The men had to be fed ; 
consequently rations got precedence over other 
supplies. The food shipments, together with reg- 



8o THE MILITIA MOBILIZATION 

ular shipping to and from the civiHan population 
of the valley, almost required the entire facilities 
of the road. 

Major General O'Ryan, commanding the New 
York division, told me one day that his quarter- 
master department had been able to get ahead 
of current needs by only four days' supplies. 

X 

REGULARS WERE PATIENT TUTORS 

The absence of prearranged plans in the border 
mobilization devolved the biggest burden upon 
the regular army staffs in the border districts, 
which were suddenly called upon to mother a 
hundred thousand comparatively inexperienced 
officers and men who were eager and willing to 
help themselves but, in view of their admitted 
amateurishness and handicaps of equipment, be- 
came largely dependent upon the regulars. 

The regulars accomplished wonders under the 
circumstances. They, better than any one else, 
realized how ineffectual the results of their work 
seemed as compared with foreign demonstrations 
of a similar nature; they could appreciate the 



THE MILITIA MOBILIZATION 8i 

deplorable absence of plan and prearranged fa- 
cilities denied them by the administration. Btit it 
was their lot to make the best of it in silence, be- 
cause a public complaint from an army officer is 
practically equivalent to his resignation. 

I found but few and far isolated instances of 
the traditional regular army disesteem for the 
civilian soldiery. A spirit of farsighted hopeful- 
ness, helpfulness, friendliness marked the atti- 
tude of the regulars toward the militiamen. The 
regulars realized that here was the opportunity 
to teach the franchised soldiery of the nation the 
military needs of the nation. It was and is their 
belief that this knowledge would result in the ap- 
plication of widespread political pressure to bring 
about the much needed reform and extensions, so 
frequently recommended by the politically helpless 
regulars and as frequently ignored. 

Regiment after regiment of regulars was strip- 
ped of officers who were detailed to advise, in- 
struct, and train the militiamen. A regular army 
first lieutenant had for his class the officers of a 
regiment, including colonel, lieutenant-colonel, 
and three majors. A captain was assigned to im- 
part technical knowledge to a brigade, especially 
the militia brigadier. Regular noncommissioned 



82 THE MILITIA MOBILIZATION 

officers spent days and weeks in the camps, teach- 
ing cooks, horseshoers, bakers, farriers, lieuten- 
ants, and captains. At Fort Ringgold, near Rio 
Grande City, where there was a force of 1,500 
men, only twelve regular officers remained, in- 
cluding the post commander. At Fort Brown some 
companies of the Fourth United States infantry 
had but one instead of three commissioned officers. 

It was the duty of these detailed regulars to 
direct the footsteps of the militia and act in the 
difficult capacity of adviser to the untrained com- 
manders of the guard units. They also conducted 
the one hour a day school in Spanish for officers 
and assisted the troop commanders and the sup- 
ply department in solving the farcical mysteries 
of the requisition formulae, by which a week's 
mathematical computation and reams of documen- 
tation are necessary before a size seven shoe can 
be changed for a pair of elevens. This red tape 
was the despair of the militia, and the business 
men in the guard who encountered this system 
marveled at its indirectness. 

The absence of blank forms frequently impeded 
this work for days. Certain needed things could 
not be asked for because the regulation applica- 
tion blank or requisition blank needed in that spe- 



THE MILITIA MOBILIZATION 83 

cial case was not to be had. I knew of cases where 
guardsmen whose enHstment had expired could 
not get their final discharges because there were 
no proper forms on which the final papers could 
be drawn. This trouble extended to the pay rolls, 
the muster blanks, the transportation vouchers, 
the medical reports. 

Where the men criticized conditions under 
which they were forced to live, many of their 
ofificers characterized the complainants as "kick- 
ers and soreheads." The men were receiving only 
$15 a month, which was far below their civilian 
wage, and maybe, in the absence of action, this 
had something to do with their kicks. But a 
large percentage of the militia officers receiving 
regular army pay, were getting more money than 
they ever earned in civilian life, and consequently 
found less reason for dissatisfaction. 

Another number of of^cial condemnations of 
criticism of the service, the conditions, the equip- 
ment, can be rightly attributed to pure ignorance. 
Such of^cers thought the conditions were good 
because they did not know what good military con- 
ditions are; their opportunities of learning had 
been limited. Other of^cers were stimulated to 
denounce criticism, in the mistaken belief that the 



84 THE MILITIA MOBILIZATION 

criticism had been directed at them personally. 
The regular army has been made the "goat" so 
frequently in "investigations" that it subcon- 
sciously assumes the defensive whenever criticism 
is in the air. 

XI 

FIELD HOSPITALS 

As usual, the care of the sick came in for much 
censure, but here again it was evident that the 
medical officers, although stoutly defending their 

conduct of affairs, were sorely handicapped by the 
paucity of premobilization plans for taking care 
of the sick and wounded. It is not to be wondered 
that in a profession where humanity is so profess- 
edly the prime stimulus, the medical and surgical 
profession would make generous response to the 
needs of the army. Militiamen while in the ser- 
vice undoubtedly received medical and surgical 
attention which would have cost thousands' to 
civilian patients capable of paying the bill. 

In army life the medicos are in the happy posi- 
tion of a disbursing agent who is his own auditor. 
They lay the rules for the sanitation of the camp. 
They care for the sick and then care for the sta- 



THE MILITIA MOBILIZATION 85 

tistics which show how numerous the sick are. 
These statistics show in turn how good the sani- 
tation has been, and altogether it all proves that 
the medical service is excellent. 

It is not my intention to intimate that the army 
doctors would take advantage of the opportunity 
to make out their own scores, but that they are 
unwilling to submit to an outside audit is unde- 
niable. Obstacles were put in my way when I 
tried to investigate conditions. Cases of illness 
were hidden from me. Furthermore, the report 
of Dr. Darlington was suppressed in the War De- 
partment. 

Hospital conditions on the border upon the ar- 
rival of the militia were admittedly bad. The ad- 
mission has come in the form of extensive re- 
forms and corrections of severely criticized con- 
ditions which were stoutly defended at first, but 
which gave way finally when criticism would not 
be browbeaten. 

At McAllen, sick men of the New York division 
lay on the ground in open, unfloored tents and 
the ground was muddy. The only hospital at hand 
was a field hospital and in its operation there 
came a clash of theory and practice. Theory re- 
mained uppermost for weeks, to the great discom- 



86 THE MILITIA MOBILIZATION 

fort and pain of patients, but practice finally won. 

The theory of a field hospital is that it should 
have no cots or flooring or screening, because, 
theoretically, patients would not remain in the 
hospital long enough to get the advantage of these 
comforts. The field hospital is hardly more than 
a first aid station immediately back of the firing 
line, where the wounded are assembled for ship- 
ment back to the next unit, which is called an evac- 
uation hospital, at which place there is another 
sorting and the hopelessly ineffective fighters are 
sent on back to the base hospital. The field hospi- 
tal must be mobile so that it can move forward or 
backward with the tide of battle. Extra equip- 
ment would impede it. 

But there being no other hospitals in which 
the New York sick could be cared for, the 
field hospital in reality became an evacuation or 
base hospital, but in theory and according to 
regulations it remained a field hospital unit. 

There was no other hospital at hand and the 
men had to be taken care of in the field hospital. 
So while strict field hospital regulations were fol- 
lowed, the canvas shelter performed the function 
of a base hospital. One day in the early part of 
July and right after a rain which left McAllen 



THE MILITIA MOBILIZATION 87 

in a sea of mud, I saw sixty sick men lying on the 
damp ground in this hospital, while a four-inch 
ridge of earth held back the water from them. 
Another man, suffering from pneumonia, had 
been unconscious for four days ; he was lying on 
a canvas stretcher on the ground. 

Opposite these rows of men on the ground were 
the tents of the officers, floored, screened, and 
equipped with cots. Since that time the hospital 
has been changed. Floors were placed, cots pro- 
vided, and the sides of the tents inclosed in wire 
screening. Now another base hospital composed 
of a number of wooden pavilions is being erected 
at McAllen at a cost of $25,000. This new insti- 
tution grew out of complaints which New York 
patients made over their treatment in the other 
base hospital at Brownsville. But the New York 
improvement was without diet kitchens for the 
feeding of convalescents who were in need of such 
consideration before being returned to the coarse 
army ration. 

Some of the men forwarded to that base hospi- 
tal at Brownsville deserted the institution. Among 
those who were able there were frequent instances 
where they got away and reported back to their 
regiments that they would rather stand court 



88 THE MILITIA MOBILIZATION 

martial for desertion than undergo treatment or 
operation at the Brownsville base hospital. 

I recall one corporal of the First Oklahoma in- 
fantry who was sent to Brownsville for a minor 
operation. The man had been a hospital ward 
steward in the navy. He told me that what he 
saw at the Brownsville hospital caused him to ab- 
sent himself without leave on the day of his arri- 
val and return to his regiment, where I saw him, 
a secret patient in another field hospital which 
was not supposed to be taking care of such cases. 

The Brownsville hospital is composed of six 
wooden pavilions and auxiliary buildings, very 
much like chicken coops, which had required six 
weeks to build. The delays were caused by the 
difficulties in getting lumber, labor, screen, and 
supplies. I went through it the day it was pro- 
nounced ready for occupancy. 

The water connections were not in; the opera- 
ating room had not been built ; the kitchens were 
not finished ; the ground had not been broken for 
either the baths or the administration building; 
the nurses' quarters were still in the brush, and 
there was no laundry. But cots were being in- 
stalled and that night the train from up the valley 
brought in two carloads of sick from the up-river 



THE MILITIA MOBILIZATION 89 

camps, the ambulances backed up to the platform, 
the sick were loaded on and taken out to the "hos- 
pital." 

For this the medicos are not to blame, but the 
commander-in-chief of the army who sent 30,000 
men to live in a fever hole without preparing hos- 
pital facilities is. 

Before the occupancy of the new hospital, the 
Brownsville "cases" were handled in an old Civil 
War ruin on the Fort Brown reservation. This 
building was erected several years after the war 
of the rebellion and had long since passed its use- 
fulness. 

At the opening of the border troubles three 
years ago, the building was reoccupied by the 
army, and sick and well alike had been living in it 
since. Two troops of cavalry used the interior for 
a barracks, while the sick were allowed to lie in 
cots on the veranda. This veranda was un- 
screened and the militiamen who began to arrive 
in July were without mosquito netting, as the reg- 
ulars had been before them. 



90 THE MILITIA MOBILIZATION 

XII 

DELAY IN GRANTING DISCHARGES 

If the sick had many things to contend with, 
the well men had other problems almost as dis- 
couraging. One of the greatest of these was the 
problem of getting discharged. 

The men began to feel that the cause for which 
they had enlisted — namely : the active defense of 
the nation's border or the invasion of Mexico — 
existed no longer. Thousands of these men, who 
had given up homes, families, and positions, all to 
take their place in their regiments if they be- 
longed to the guard, or to enlist if they were not 
members, began to feel as the days dragged into 
weeks and the weeks into months with no military 
action to break the monotony, that they had been 
cheated, duped, shanghaied into a proposition 
where they lost their accustomed work and civili- 
an salary and gained a day laborer's job at a mil- 
itary pittance. 

When it appeared that there had been no 
necessity for the mobilization, that either the dan- 
ger had not existed at all or did not continue to 
exist, that nothing was being accomplished by the 



THE MILITIA MOBILIZATION 91 

continued presence of the militia on the border, 
employers who had agreed to pay their employes 
in government service began to get the same feel- 
ings as their employes; they began to feel that 
they had been and were cheated, duped, exploited. 

Congress passed a poorly defined act by which 
militiamen with dependents, if they knew the 
formula, could make application for discharge. 
Immediately employes who possessed the ex- 
pressed qualifications of the act began receiving 
letters from their employers, urging them to get 
their discharges and return to work or their sal- 
aries, which had been going to their wives and 
children, would stop. There was a stampede for 
discharges. It is not to be denied that guardsmen 
with dependents were considered fortunate by 
their irresponsible comrades, and it must be ad- 
mitted that many forgotten sisters and cousins 
and aunts and relatives or distant connections 
suddenly found young guardsmen eager to con- 
tribute to their support. 

But the overwhelming majority of the cases 
were bona fide, and the condition of many wives 
and children and aged parents suddenly deprived 
of support from fathers, husbands, and sons was 
deplorable. 



92 THE MILITIA MOBILIZATION 

Employers couldn't understand why their em- 
ployes who were in the guard and who had de- 
pendents didn't take advantage of the immunity 
offered by congress, return home to the care of 
their loved ones, and relieve their employers of 
the financial drain, which had by that time begun 
to lose its patriotic aspect. The reason was that 
the guardsmen couldn't get the discharges; that 
their efforts were opposed; that many obstacles 
were put in their way to prevent them from leav- 
ing the ranks. The opposition, sometimes passive, 
sometimes active, came from the commanders, 
most of whom would have found their commands 
much reduced if all of the applications for dis- 
charges were acted upon, or were acting upon 
instructions from Washington. 

The fact remains that almost everybody wanted 
to go home. As I was boarding a train in Browns- 
ville several weeks ago, I was approached by a 
young guardsman, who hurriedly told me his case, 
thrust into my hands a number of copies of letters 
between himself, his wife, and his employers, and 
said: "Explain to the employers back home that 
we want to get out but can't. They don't under- 
stand why we can't get out and neither do we, but 
the fact is that we can't. My employer is threat- 



THE MILITIA MOBILIZATION 93 

ening to cut off my salary unless I return, and I 
have a wife and baby back home. I'll be in an 
awful fix if the salary doesn't continue." 

I found obstruction after obstruction was put 
in the way of the men who wished to return to 
the care of their families, almost regardless of the 
extremity of the circumstances. A man who was 
suffering the mental anguish that comes with the 
knowledge of loved ones unprovided for was made 
to feel that he was a "quitter" and a "slacker" if 
he made application for discharge. 

Commanding officers addressed their men on 
this subject and heaped anathema upon those who 
might have in their hearts the primitive and just- 
ly selfish feeling of responsibility toward their 
families. 

If the determined militiaman, with will power 
and courage sufficient to overcome these intimida- 
tions, did decide to ask for his discharge, he en- 
countered a new stumbling block — official ignor- 
ance, either real or professed. He was told that 
the application had to be made in "due form," but 
what that consisted of was a mystery. He was 
told that he had to have affidavits from relatives 
and friends, and papers signed, countersigned and 
witnessed. There were no blanks for the pur- 



94 THE MILITIA MOBILIZATION 

pose, the officers didn't know whether any had 
ever been prepared ; the orders had been delayed. 
The matter would be looked up. 

And so, for some of the men, the weeks dragged 
by, with every mail bringing appeals concerning 
the need of shoes, the butcher's bill, the doctor's 
bill, the increase in the price of baby's milk — and 
the empty purse. In the meantime the would-be 
applicant for discharge was being subjected to all 
manner of humiliation. 

It is difficult to get the figures on how many 
desertions there were, but I know of five from 
one Illinois regiment. Every fifty miles of the 
way from Brownsville toward San Antonio pro- 
vost details searched all the trains and placed un- 
der arrest all guardsmen unable to show official 
permission for their movement. Many officers 
unable to obtain furloughs resigned and some for 
other reasons. 

All over the country funds started for the re- 
lief of the militia dependents. The Red Cross 
took up the work. In Chicago this organization 
had, by the end of September, expended about 
$50,000 in administering relief to some 600 de- 
pendent families, which received from $5 to $50 a 
month. Aside from these sums, chambers of com- 



1 



THE MILITIA MOBILIZATION 95 

merce and city organizations in small towns and 
large cities endeavored to meet the worthy de- 
mand by subscription, and further still, many reg- 
imental officers held lists of regimental "un- 
cles," military enthusiasts, wealthy former mem- 
bers of the organizations, all of whom were 
called upon to contribute to the support of fam- 
ilies for the honor of the regiment so that the 
ranks of the organization would not be decimated 
by the stalking figure of want. 

But their work, patriotic and wide-spread, has 
not sufficed. In thousands of rented rooms, little 
houses and small flats, tragedies are being en- 
acted as bitter to the sufferers as the tragedies of 
unavoidable war — and they are caused by the 
selfishness and caprices of politics. 

Have I overlooked what was done for what was 
not done? Have I been scant in praise of what 
was done right? Have I been tactlessly remiss 
with congratulations and brutally frank with cold 
observations? I have. 

In another series, if the editor permits, I will 
present the pleasing side of the picture. Quarter- 
master Aloe, working far into the night, every 
night; Captain McCoy doing a general officer's 
work with captain's rank and pay; militia officers, 



96 THE MILITIA MOBILIZATION 

business leaders, struggling with the atrocious ac- 
counting system, although every one of them could 
have installed an infinitely better one if permitted 
by officialdom ; the courage of other business men, 
wielding ax and spade in the frightful heat, dig- 
ging ditches, building picket lines, and doing other 
labor they should not have been called upon to do. 
And General Parker, medal of honor hero, who 
in the face of all obstacles, lack of modern equip- 
ment, and government indifference, has kept his 
cavalry on a par with Russia's, working night 
and day to bring order out of the chaos thrust 
upon him. 

But first must be set out the wrongfulness of 
the civilian head of the army compelling the mob- 
ilization of troops in the field contrary to world- 
wide lessons fully learned by soldiers. 

In this instance it has led only to unparalleled 
discomfort, not a little tragedy and some avoid- 
able deaths. If it should occur again in the face 
of a competent enemy it might lead to national 
destruction. 



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